Forums

[Kidz Fashion Zone]

If I wanted to start my own forum what is the best free thingy to use

I don't know much about forums (apart from I am addicted to them) and need to know a little bit about making it secure etc or does all that come with it

thinking out loud really, don't know if I will do this or not

[Magsite]

www.vbulletin.com (http://www.vbulletin.com) is what this and my forum runs on

Costs about £70 for a years licence

[JamieM]

I agree vbulletin is the best but the best free one I would say is phpbb.

www.phpbb.com (http://www.phpbb.com)

[mcarp555]

The big three seem to be vbt (vbulletin), sbm (smart business machines) and phpbb. Vbt used to be free, but as lisa1979 has pointed out, no longer. I've set up a phpbb, and it's not as difficult as creating a website from scratch, so you shouldn't have any problems. The others are probably about as easy. You've got MySQL experience, which will be handy.

You might want to look over some forums you like and see what version they are.

[AlphOmega]

I suppose a decision to be made is whether you will build your own skin for it. Wheras I know mybb and simple machines have more features than phpbb, phpbb is far easier than these to manually create your own template.

But vbulitin is everywhere so it must be very good. Ive only experience it as a user

[Rob Holmes]

I would also recommend you have a look at these guys - http://www.mybboard.com/

Rob

[Ian J]

I would think very carefully as for every succesful forum there are hundreds of failures. There is nothing worse than a dead forum and you need large numbers of members and probably quite a lot of cash spending to get anywhere near large enough to be self sufficient.

I thought about launching a forum as an add on to my website in which I could offer financial advice to companies but abandoned the idea when I realised that all of my competitors would join and try and plunder all of my hard earned enquiries so abandoned the idea.

[Ravenfire]

Tanya phpBB is probably the best free one but its also very difficult to add modifications to as opposed to the paid ones such as vBulletin and IPB.

I have used all three and have to say that I have found vBulletin by far the best and easiest to use and thats what we use on Mumszone.

[dan_moore]

Tanya, As your criterion was a free forum, then I think I'd probably also suggest phpBB. The much harder thing is getting the forum to be active and grow over a period of time!

[Subbynet]

If you are going to use phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com) remember to secure it properly from Spammers.

That goes for any forum tbh, but phpbb in its default form is fairly susceptible. You can find many modifications available to counter this problem on the phpBB community forums.

[DuaneJackson]

Personalli I'd suggest you avoid phpBB - it's a nightmare to secure.

[Kidz Fashion Zone]

If you are going to use phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com) remember to secure it properly from Spammers.

That goes for any forum tbh, but phpbb in its default form is fairly susceptible. You can find many modifications available to counter this problem on the phpBB community forums.

this was my concern in my opening post, I wanted to know which is the best one and how to secure it. What measures do I need to have in place to stop it getting hacked and spammed

I will look on the phpBB forums before making a decision.

of course vbulletin would be my first choice but I want to start out with something that's free as I don't even know whether having a forum would even work for me

[Kidz Fashion Zone]

thanks to everyone who has replied :D

[dan_moore]

It's generally quite true that you work really hard to build up a forum. Once that is successful and you start to get good traffic, unfortunately your site suddenly also becomes much more attractive to spammers. Trying to deal with it effectively is a real nightmare, and unfortunately requires time and effort whichever forums you use, though some are harder to secure than others as rightly pointed out above.

[Richie N]

Yes we have a catering forum which is phpbb and have encountered a few problems with spammers previously....

I would say if you have the money to spend on the forum then go for vbulletin

[Ian J]

unfortunately your site suddenly also becomes much more attractive to spammers. Trying to deal with it effectively is a real nightmare,

Vbulletin has a wonderful add on hack called "Spam Decimator" whereby with a single keypress the mods can delete every post that the spammer has made, ban him and send him an email, telling him to go forth and multiply. It even tells you if anyone else has used the spammer's IP address.

[dan_moore]

Vbulletin has a wonderful add on hack called "Spam Decimator" .

Sounds good! Is it effective?

[Chelltune]

I've just had a phpbb forum added to my site and am now wondering if we would be safer choosing a different one?

[Subbynet]

I've just had a phpbb forum added to my site and am now wondering if we would be safer choosing a different one?

Just make sure you are running the latest version +/or patches and you should be ok.

Its wise to subscribe to their mailing list so you're notified straight away should a security problem occur.

(ps. That goes for all software you run!)

[Ozzy]

I used to use phpBB on these forums but decided to pay for vBulletin because these forums were hacked twice and I wanted to use an application which I could feel confident had a level of ongoing commercial support with it. Vbulletin is paid software, so it has a budget to dedicate to development, and it has plenty more features that phpBB.
What made the decision for me though was after the second time these forums we hacked I decided enough was enough and whent for a commercial application, and after all $70 (about £40) is nothing really in the scheme of things.